Connecticut, and Carolina grants run westward to the "South Sea"? And
although these grants had lapsed, the power of the king to make them was
undiminished; the Pennsylvania charter, the latest of all, gave title far
west of the mountains.

[Sidenote: Expediency.]

To these paper claims were added arguments of convenience: the Lake
Champlain region, the southern tributaries of Lake Ontario, and the
headwaters of the Ohio, were more easily reached from the Atlantic coast
than by working up the rapids of the St Lawrence and its tributaries, or
against two thousand miles of swift current on the Mississippi. To the
Anglo-Saxon hunger for more land was added the fear of Indian attacks; the
savages were alarmed by the advance of settlements, and no principles of
international law could prevent frontiersmen from exploring the region
claimed by France, or from occupying favorite spots. There was no
opportunity for compromise between the two parties; agreement was
impossible, a conflict was a mere matter of time, and the elaborate
arguments which each side set forth as a basis for its claim were intended
only to give the prestige of a legal title. In the struggle the English
colonies had one significant moral advantage: they desired the land that
they might occupy it; the French wished only to hold it vacant for some
future and remote settlement, or to control the fur-trade.


13. COLLISIONS ON THE FRONTIER (1749-1754).


[Sidenote: The Iroquois]